Azerbaijan ranks second among CIS countries in terms of decreasing gold and exchange currency reserves, Kazakh Kursiv newspaper wrote, citing its own analytical group Kursiv Research.

"The Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) used $6.74 billion of its gold and exchange currency reserves in January-September 2015, or 49.01 percent of its total sum,” the article said. “The decrease in the country’s gold and exchange currency reserves is also associated with a decrease in oil prices. The CBA spent the reserves by conducting interventions on the foreign exchange market to restrain the favorable exchange rate versus the US dollar."

The rapid reduction of reserves stopped at the end of the third quarter of 2015. The foreign exchange reserves, held by the Central Bank, reach $7.015 billion as of late September, while the country's strategic reserves exceed $42 billion.

“Since early this year, almost all CIS countries have faced the need to maintain their national currencies, not waiting for the prices in the oil market to stabilize,” according to the article.

“Thus, gold and currency reserves of the CIS countries showed negative dynamics during the first nine months. The decrease in the volume of reserves was also due to the fall in gold prices,” said the article’s author.

The rating doesn’t include the volume of gold and currency reserves of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, for which data is unavailable.

According to surveys by Kursiv Research, Russia is the absolute leader in terms of reductions of gold and currency reserves.

“The wars in the oil market, coupled with the fall in gold prices, have caused a reduction in the volume of Russia’s gold and currency reserves,” read the article.

“If, at the beginning of the year, gold and foreign currency reserves of the country amounted to $385.46 billion, on the results of September, their volume decreased by $14.19 billion to $371.27 billion,” the article said.

Kazakhstan heads up the top three leaders on expenses of gold and foreign currency reserves.

“Given the fact that Kazakhstan depends on oil exports, the country's economy began to weaken after oil prices fell by over 50 percent,” the article said. “Since the beginning of 2015 to September, the national bank used 3.08 percent or $871 million from the gold and foreign currency reserves of the country. In total, the volume of gold and foreign currency reserves of the country is $27.39 billion.”

Kazakhstan is followed by Belarus, which used $0.43 billion from gold and foreign currency reserves. As a result, the volume of the reserves fell from $5.06 billion to $4.63 billion.

Moldova ranks fifth – its gold and foreign exchange reserve has decreased by 17.96 percent, or $387.3 million and stood at $1.77 billion.

The lowest volume of spending in gold and foreign exchange reserves was observed in Kyrgyzstan. The country’s reserve has decreased by $148.2 million during the first nine months of 2015.

Kursiv Research said that during the reporting period, only Ukraine and Armenia managed to increase their gold and foreign exchange reserves – by $5.24 billion and $249.9 million, respectively.

This is while Russia is the leader among CIS countries for its volume of gold and foreign exchange reserve ($371.27 billion).

Kazakhstan ranks second with $27.39 billion, followed by Ukraine with $12.77 billion.

Kyrgyzstan and Moldova have the lowest volume of gold and foreign exchange reserves - $1.7 billion and $1.77 billion, respectively.